D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser pushed back Monday after two federal reports criticized D.C.’s police chief and questioned the accuracy of D.C.’s crime data.
News4 obtained a Department of Justice draft report Friday that called the Metropolitan Police Department’s crime data “likely unreliable and inaccurate due to misclassifications,” adding “violent crime is not being accurately documented and reported to the public.”
The report alleges MPD has been systematically downgrading hundreds of crimes to show a decrease.
“I don’t see any evidence of that,” Bowser said Monday. “If the claim is – and I don’t think anybody has demonstrated that the police chief directed anybody to change numbers – when the committee provides me their backup information, which they haven’t, when the committee provided the report to the Washington Post before they provided it to us, highly unusual when you’re talking about an audit of numbers, because frequently, audits of numbers are misunderstood.”
“People are very clear about the precipitous decline in crime in the District from murder, shootings, homicides, you name it, and it is a very complicated business to talk about crime classifications that precedes this chief of police,” Bowser said.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro issued a statement reading, in part, “It is evident that a significant number of reports had been misclassified, making crime appear artificially lower than it was. The uncovering of these manipulated crime statistics makes clear that President Trump has reduced crime even more than originally thought, since crimes were actually higher than reported.”
On Sunday, the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee released its own report with many of the same findings as the DOJ.
The report, “How D.C.’s Police Chief Undermined Crime Data Accuracy,” alleges Chief of Police Pamela Smith humiliated and removed officers who failed to report low crime numbers.
The DOJ report is also highly critical of Smith’s management style, saying she pressured police officials to misclassify crimes through a “culture of coercive fear that emanates from Pamela Smith.”
“Well, the chief’s management style is a management issue,” Bowser said. “It is not, it should not, it’s highly irregular that it would be the subject of a congressional review. I think they started these inquiries as a crime investigation, and obviously that didn’t pan out, so that’s where they landed.”
Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., posted on social media that Smith, who announced her resignation before the reports were made public, should resign immediately, not at the end of the year as planned.
“I don’t have anything to say about that,” Bowser said.
Late Monday afternoon, Bowser sent a letter to Comer and Pirro calling the House report “a rush to judgement” that was politically motivated.
Smith said prior to the reports coming out that her decision to resign was personal, but many, including the police union, question the timing.
As for the next chief, sources say Bowser narrowed it down to two candidates, including Executive Assistant Chief Jeff Carroll, who has been on the short list for the top spot for years and is currently No. 2 in the department.
Bowser met face to face with several of the department’s assistant chiefs Monday to hear directly from them about the allegations in the reports and what her next steps may be.
The head of the union has been pushing for these investigations for months. Union Chair Greggory Pemberton, whose interview with News4 in July prompted the investigations, issued a statement blasting the chief and calling for two assistant chiefs mentioned in the DOJ report to step down.
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